I've got a lot of guitars and spend more time dicking around with them than playing them. Sad really.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Wear your ply with pride pt. 15

So here I am trying to undo my mistakes.

I dismantled the guitar and taped the body up so I could mark out and drill the new holes for the tremolo bushes. It became immediately obvious they would be dreadfully close to the bridge pickup route. They wouldn't break through, but the route needed for the plate that supports them could easily and without that plate there just wouldn't be enough wood to support them.

So I merrily drilled away.

Once the holes were in place the route for the sustain block had to be moved forwards too.

Then the 'inset' for the tremolo base plate.

Which broke through into the pickup route.

Which also leaves me with a gaping hole on the treble side previously needed for the sustain block.

Also, the base plate inset I'd previously routed by eye using a simple straight edge didn't 100% match up with this new route I did with a template and looked godawful.

So I used a profile bit to add an second terrace to the tremolo inset, it's the only thing I could think of to do to tidy it up.

All the while doing this I was quite despondent about the fact this was probably going to look awful. Still I persevered and put it back together once I'd finished hacking at it with my router.

I was pleasantly surprised, I did seem to have managed to mark out the studs in the right position and the guitar intonated fine.

The great big tremolo inset is a bit odd looking and not something you'd expect on a production guitar but it's not totally awful.

The fact the bridge pickup surround almost butts up to the tremolo baseplate hides the fact the pickup route has been broken into. There's maybe 0.5mm between the two.

So, happy with the fact it's not a total disaster, I've taken the tremolo out again to put some Danish oil in the inset. Maybe tomorrow I'll get it all back together properly, set it up fully and finally play it.